Speed Up Windows Vista

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It’s been well over a year since Windows Vista shipped, and despite all the naysayers crooning that Microsoft really goofed with the operating system, it happens that our previous article on speeding up Windows Vista was one of our most popular pieces in 2007.

After much research, plenty of heavy use, and lots of experimenting, we’ve come up with a few more ways to tweak out the operating system with performance in mind. Vista is constantly being criticized for being too pokey, but in actuality, on a modern system, it’s pretty buff—especially if you streamline it.

A few things you might want to keep in mind:

Check for new drivers frequently. Graphics drivers, especially, have come a very long way since their earlier, crappier predecessors. Look also for chipset drivers, audio drivers, and peripheral drivers on a regular basis.

Keep Windows updates current as well, whether you use the automated update system or you check for updates manually on a regular basis.

Don’t apply any of our tweaks without first backing up your system. Drop all of your important data files onto removable media or even an external hard drive.

All of these optimizations can be undone, and should be if they don’t function to your liking. Pay attention to the steps you take to perform them, and reverse them as you see fit.

Remember that Windows Vista optimizes itself as it keeps track of how you use your computer. While it doesn’t hurt to perform these tweaks on a fresh installation, you might actually wish to wait a couple of weeks (especially before you tweak the startup files) before you apply them.

Now, on to the optimizations. With your system fully updated and backed up, tear into the OS and make it run more smoothly.

Some Stuff to Avoid TweakingBefore we get into the actual tweaks, there are a few items you really should not mess around with. Some of them include recommended tweaks for prior Windows operating systems; Vista is, believe it or not, improved in its handling of certain aspects of day to day maintenance over Windows XP.

Items to leave alone include SuperFetch and the page file.

SuperFetch is vastly better than that found in Windows XP. SuperFetch takes note of the applications you use most often and keeps a working record of this in the system’s main memory. Programs that you use the most are optimized to load faster. Thus, if you’re a frequent user of, say, Word, and you rarely use Adobe Reader, Vista will configure itself to load Word as quickly as possible without much regard for Reader. Furthermore, when a background task runs, SuperFetch allows memory for it—but when it’s finished, it drops the stuff that you’ve used the most back into memory so that it’s there when you need it. For more, check out the TechNet piece on SuperFetch.

The page file is also subject to a vast improvement over Vista. The best thing to do is to let it take care of itself. The page file, sometimes called virtual memory, is stored on the hard drive and used to store data that might not fit in main memory. While it’s treated by the system in a similar way to RAM, since it’s on the much slower hard drive it takes longer to access.

If your system is low in memory, you might notice the hard drive thrashing frequently; the answer isn’t to tweak how Windows Vista handles the paging of data, but to add more memory to your system. Continued